Fast & Funny Video Comparing the Latest Lightbulb Technologies

I love your enthusiasm!!

The amount of light vs. watts pulled is pretty exciting :)

that is sweet, i can't wait for the led costs to come down with more development, but i'm not waiting to buy them .. . .

Nice review. I'm switching to LED Christmas tree lights this year. Boy, there are a lot of choices. Care to do a review of Christmas LED light strings?

LOVE IT! Great video. Just made the switch to pull all LED lights in the Christmas tree. Save $ energy. Took only 3 strands VS 10 strands of reg. lights last year.

I'm so looking forward to the day when LED bulbs will be cheap...er :-)

We would love to win this bulb. We will tweet about it, Blog about it, and most importantly. USE it. :-)

Thanks and great video, keep up the great work!
Twitter.com/PawLuxury

Is it just me, or only the last one looks comparable to the CFL in luminosity, and it's just 30% more efficient. Not counting the fact that the fan will last much less than the LED it-self and if you don't remember to check it would lead to a breakdown (as you may have experienced with your PC). And it costs 80$.
Sorry but it doesn't seem to be the time yet.

I noticed he didn't do any of the down sides to any of the lights he picked up.

'normal' bulbs: Generate heat as well as light. If you are heating your home that heat isn't wasted, it's heating your house. They are cheap, and have no complicated parts. The EPA don't recommend you evacuate and air out a room when you break them. They aren't sensitive to on off cycles, and can be used in low temperatures.

CFLs: Shouldn't be used where it's cold, contain toxic substances, work best with few on off cycles, contain lots of parts that can fail before the life span of the bulb is over making it useless anyway. They have their places to be used, like any tool (NOT EVERYWHERE!)

LEDs: Mentioned in the article were some drawbacks, sensitive to heat, and VERY expensive.

So far it looks like CFLs are the winner for hall lights, and others that go on/off once or twice a day, and regular bulbs everywhere else. Exactly like I have my house set up. Contrary to the 10000 hour to 15000 hour rating on CFLs I've only lived in my house for a year and a half and I've changed just as many CFLs as incandescents. Maybe it's our power, or our lighting fixtures or something, but I'm so far not wowed.

The fellow has mixed his bulbs up a bit. A 14 watt CFL is equal to a 60 watt incandescent bulb not a 40. That is why the CFL is much brighter. See the chart at:
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=cfls.pr_cfls

Traciatim- I hear the heat argument a lot. Electric heat is the least efficient form of heat and with incandescent bulbs you are heating during the cooling season too. While incandescents aren't particularly sensitive to on/off cycles, they do burn out very quickly compared to CFLs or LEDs.

I watched an episode of Mythbusters that proved in lab conditions CFLs aren't sensitive to on/off cycles. That is a belief held over from the early days of CFLs. Here in VT the state subsidizes CFLs and most stores carry the GE Energy Smart CFL bulbs. I have some in my kitchen and living room that have lasted more than 5 years with me turning the lights out every time I leave the room. I've never broken one, so I've never had a mercury issue, but I would like to see how much mercury they save from coal plant emissions or how many tuna fish sandwiches equal the amount of mercury in one CFL bulb.

I'm surprised the video only used those LED bulbs. As far as I'm aware the best application for LEDs is task lighting. I have PAR30 and PAR38 LEDs in recessed cans as well as my desk and reading lamps. The ones I bought from www.ledlight.com are a much truer white than CFLs or incandescents and the largest PAR38 only uses 8 watts.

I'm glad someone has a video comparison out there. I bought some really expensive and realy BLUE LEDs from C.Crane before I realized there were better companies out there.

i bought a 9 or 10 watt from either earthLED @ somewhere between $50-70... unfortunately it burned out within a few months. now admittedly, i do have a somewhat abnormal use for it in that i run it 24/7. unfortunately, i was too lazy to get around to calling customer service (i work in it myself and it's not the most enjoyable experience to have to call other companies).

however, that said, i would buy one of these if i had some extra money. i'm an LED junkie (i also have a MagLite LED and a high-powered book clip-like light a local college was giving out) and this "next gen" (or at least high powered LED gen 1.2 or 1.5) is holding my interest captive.

i have some older 3x1 watt and 3x3 watt LED bulbs from a different company. one of those has died, too (sorta .. it was flickering at ... uh .. nearly epilepsy-attack-inducing .. uhm ... flickerings). now i'm down to the 3x1 watt, i believe. been running for 3+ years straight.

i look forward to any LED tech that's coming out at near-OCD levels ;) (and am getting impatient it's not proliferating more quickly)

I've had nothing but GREAT success with CFL's. I have bulbs that haven't been changed in over 4 years (no joke). I made my office switch to CFL and they haven't changed bulbs in a year. It's definitely the way to go.
Once things get a little cheaper on the LED side, I'd like to go that route next.

"I hear the heat argument a lot. Electric heat is the least efficient form of heat"

Umm... No. Electric is the MOST efficient form of generating heat. Maybe not the most cost effective, but the most efficient: Electric heaters turn very close to 100% of the electricity they use into heat. 100% efficient. Even the most efficient furnaces run at around 90% or so.

Granted, the heat from lightbulbs is only useful when you're heating the house, but for some of us, that season is fairly long. My in-laws house has electric baseboard heaters exclusively, so in the winter, incandescent lightbulbs are the greenest option for them to use.

What a great video. I love the enthusiasm. And of course would love to win such a great light bulb!

I would also love to know about the energy saving comparison between having dimmer switches and just changing bulbs to cfl?

Yes electric resistors are 100% efficient converting ELECTRICITY to heat, but electricity doesn't exist in nature. In general we get our electricity from fossil fuel sources, plus there are transmission losses, so in most cases it is more efficient to use a modern furnace or boiler compared to electric resistance.

Air source heat pumps allow you to get the equivalent of 300-400% efficiency (by using the refrigeration cycle to take "free" heat from the environment), and ground source heat pumps can be many times more efficient than that. If you are going to use electricity to heat, use a heat pump, not electric resistance.

"Care to do a review of Christmas LED light strings?"

FWIW, I picked up a set of Phillip's LED lights a few years ago in an after Christmas sale, and absolutely love them. will never go back to old bulbs again!

Friends just picked up some GE LED's, so have two good brands to choose from.

Wow that's awesome! I'm going to check out the earthLED website now and see what else they have. :)

As a Manufacturers rep in South Florida for www.cleanlightgreenlight.com I am helping a major beach hotel replace 1266 fixtures of 260 watt HID parking lot lighting. Not only will the replacements reduce their electric bill by 2/3, but after the lease/purchase payment they will show a positive $5,000 a month on their balance sheet. This on top of removing the mercury laden light bulbs and almost totally relieving them of maintenance hours for many years after the 5 year warrenty.

We also replace 4' florescent bulbs that are 95% heat and only 5% light with our high effecient LED tubes that are fully 95% light and only 5% heat and 25% of the watt usage. Also, directional lighting means a 90 degree light spread will not produce light pollution but instead put the light where it is needed.

The future for electrical lighting is LED solid state lighting and certainly long term cost effecient.